'The unreality of the last 4 years'

Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz has a brilliant piece on the Obama administration's denial of reality for the last 4 years, specifically as it relates to Libya:

All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies-this is understood-but there's no missing the distinctive quality of the prevaricating issuing from the White House in these four years.

It's a quality on vivid display now in the administration's mesmerizing narrative of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Here's a memorable picture, its detail brutally illuminating, of Obama and company in crisis mode over their conflicting stories about who knew what when. The resulting costs to truth-telling and sanity, or even the appearance thereof, are clear. Nor can we forget the strong element of farce-think U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on those five Sunday talk shows, reciting with unflagging fervor that official talking point regarding mob violence and a YouTube video. Farce, but no one is laughing.

Team Obama clung to its original story-the attack had come spontaneously at the hands of a mob enraged by that now famous video insulting to the Prophet-long after it was clear that it had been an organized terrorist assault by an al Qaeda affiliate. By Tuesday's debate, we saw a Barack Obama in high dudgeon over suggestions that his office might have deliberately misrepresented the facts. It was, he fumed, an intolerable insult that such charges could have been made about him, the president who had had to receive the bodies of the slain Americans-and who then had to set about getting to the bottom of this murderous terror assault.

Profound and urgent concerns indeed-which, the president neglected to say, had not prevented him from jetting off to his fundraiser in Las Vegas the day after the murders. His administration was not given to politicizing serious matters, the president sternly informed the nation in that second debate: "That's not what we do."

Rabinowitz calls out the president for accusing the GOP of "politicizing" the attack:

Mr. Obama's outrage notwithstanding, the administration's prolonged efforts to muddle the picture of the Benghazi attack raised proper suspicions. The Obama team's instant response-that Republicans were attempting to politicize a tragedy-was entirely characteristic. If ever a story screamed its politicized nature, it was the administration's Scheherazade-like tale, now five weeks old and rolling on, about that Sept. 11 assault. A tale that left little doubt of its motivation: fear of the impact, so close to the election, of a successful terrorist attack-the clear indication that al Qaeda was not, as claimed, on the run.

Indeed, the president has dropped the "we have our enemies on the run" statement from his stump speech, having been forced to do so or look ridiculous for saying it. Al-Qaeda is growing in strength and while the killing of Osama bin Laden was emotionally satisfying, fighting al-Qaeda is a long struggle for which the Obama team seems ill prepared.

Read the rest of Rabinowitz's brilliant piece.

Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz has a brilliant piece on the Obama administration's denial of reality for the last 4 years, specifically as it relates to Libya:

All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies-this is understood-but there's no missing the distinctive quality of the prevaricating issuing from the White House in these four years.

It's a quality on vivid display now in the administration's mesmerizing narrative of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Here's a memorable picture, its detail brutally illuminating, of Obama and company in crisis mode over their conflicting stories about who knew what when. The resulting costs to truth-telling and sanity, or even the appearance thereof, are clear. Nor can we forget the strong element of farce-think U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on those five Sunday talk shows, reciting with unflagging fervor that official talking point regarding mob violence and a YouTube video. Farce, but no one is laughing.

Team Obama clung to its original story-the attack had come spontaneously at the hands of a mob enraged by that now famous video insulting to the Prophet-long after it was clear that it had been an organized terrorist assault by an al Qaeda affiliate. By Tuesday's debate, we saw a Barack Obama in high dudgeon over suggestions that his office might have deliberately misrepresented the facts. It was, he fumed, an intolerable insult that such charges could have been made about him, the president who had had to receive the bodies of the slain Americans-and who then had to set about getting to the bottom of this murderous terror assault.

Profound and urgent concerns indeed-which, the president neglected to say, had not prevented him from jetting off to his fundraiser in Las Vegas the day after the murders. His administration was not given to politicizing serious matters, the president sternly informed the nation in that second debate: "That's not what we do."

Rabinowitz calls out the president for accusing the GOP of "politicizing" the attack:

Mr. Obama's outrage notwithstanding, the administration's prolonged efforts to muddle the picture of the Benghazi attack raised proper suspicions. The Obama team's instant response-that Republicans were attempting to politicize a tragedy-was entirely characteristic. If ever a story screamed its politicized nature, it was the administration's Scheherazade-like tale, now five weeks old and rolling on, about that Sept. 11 assault. A tale that left little doubt of its motivation: fear of the impact, so close to the election, of a successful terrorist attack-the clear indication that al Qaeda was not, as claimed, on the run.

Indeed, the president has dropped the "we have our enemies on the run" statement from his stump speech, having been forced to do so or look ridiculous for saying it. Al-Qaeda is growing in strength and while the killing of Osama bin Laden was emotionally satisfying, fighting al-Qaeda is a long struggle for which the Obama team seems ill prepared.